


Love You, Sugar

by gayouijaboard



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Mostly Fluff, One Shot, Total Eclipse of the Heart, minor depiction of character death, soft relationship, you all know how this one ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 10:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17979941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayouijaboard/pseuds/gayouijaboard
Summary: There’s a reason Klaus can’t listen to Total Eclipse of the Heart anymore, and it’s got everything to do with the only man who was ever allowed to call him Sugar.





	Love You, Sugar

The first time it happened, it had been an accident. Klaus wasn’t trying to take credit for anyone else’s accomplishments, nor was he trying to mislead his definite-crush-sort-of-boyfriend. The two of them were already fighting in the fucking _Vietnam_ _war_ ; god knew Dave didn’t need Klaus lying to him on top of the humongous laundry list of shit he already had to deal with.

But... well, Dave still didn’t know that Klaus was a man out of time. Probably never would, either, if only because Klaus wasn’t sure he could explain the circumstances without sounding like a fucking crackhead. Which, okay, technically he _sort_ _of_ used to be, but that was irrelevant. He was two months sober now, and despite the fact that everything about his life was fucking insane, even _he_ got concerned for his own well being when he tried to think about just _how_ he’d ended up in 1968 Vietnam. If he couldn’t even explain it to himself, he _definitely_ wasn’t going to be able to explain it to Dave.

Thus, the first incident.

“What’re you humming?”

Klaus popped an eye open, glancing over at the man laying beside him on the ground. It was dark, and the other soldiers part of their group were fast asleep. Klaus had been under the impression Dave was as well, but then, he also hadn’t realized he’d been humming in the first place. Turned out sobriety did absolutely nothing for his awareness.

“Nothing, sorry,” Klaus whispered, reaching over to squeeze Dave’s hand with his own. The two of them always made sure to be careful — they were close with the other soldiers, sure. War sort of demanded it. But even then, the nature of their relationship was dangerous out here. Honestly, Klaus had been a teenager in the 2000’s, and even _he_ had never seen so many raging homophobes all in one place. Hypocritical ones, at that. Those with the loudest mouths were the same ones always propositioning him for dirty, _dirty_ sex, _not_ that he ever accepted. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“No, that wasn’ _nothin_ ’,” Dave insisted, squeezing Klaus’ hand back before scooting closer. The added warmth of his body was almost enough to make Klaus let out an obscene moan; it was god damn cold on the Vietnam war front. “There were words and stuff, I heard ‘em. What song’s that?”

Klaus would’ve loved to be able to share with this beautiful man the wonders and emotional drama of listening to Total Eclipse of the Heart for the first time ever — honestly, was there anything more defining in life? — but unfortunately, the song hadn’t technically been written yet. _Klaus_ knew it, because Klaus was yet to be born for another twenty one years. He couldn’t just explain that quite so easily to Dave, though, so honestly... what was he to do?

“It’s not a song,” Klaus tried, hoping in vain that Dave would merely drop his questions. No such luck, as it would seem. “It’s just something that’s been stuck in my head a few days, that’s all.”

A lightbulb seemed to go off in Dave’s head. “So it’s yours?” he asked, moving his face closer to Klaus’. Oh, _that_ wasn’t fair — how the fuck was Klaus supposed to come up with a decent cover story when the most beautiful fucking man he’d ever seen was flirting with him like some big old tease? “ _You_ wrote that song?”

“I... wouldn’t say that...” A distracting hand was snaking its way up his torso, and Klaus knew his protests weren’t going to last very long if Dave wanted to get physical. They were still getting to know one another, still making sense of their feelings and their desires, but Dave seemed to have picked up on the fact that all it took was a little push before Klaus would be fully willing to give him anything he wanted. “Really, Dave, it’s nothing special.”

“Everything to do with you’s special, Sugar,” Dave told him, grinning widely as his teeth flashed in the moonlight.

Klaus chuckled quietly, caught off guard at how easy it had been to laugh. They might’ve been in the middle of a war zone, Klaus might’ve been led to this place via torturous time traveling assassins, and his siblings may or may not have realized he was missing by now, but none of that mattered when he had Dave. Emotions were so easy to feel with this man that it was damn near insane.

He shook his head, breaking himself out of his own reverie. That was another thing about being sober — he had an obscene amount of space in his mind to think now, even with the ghosts who filled the trenches in waves. “Thought we talked about how you calling me that was a no.”

“We did _no_ such thing,” Dave murmured into his ear, clutching him closer and closer. “ _You_ told me it makes me sound like some perverted small town hick—“

“It does.”

“—and _I_ said it’s the only good name I got for you, seeing as you’re the sweetest soul I ever met.”

Oh, yes, _that_. How could Klaus have forgotten, considering the way those words made his stomach do flips?

“You need to go back to sleep,” Klaus whispered. He caved for a moment, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of Dave’s mouth. It wasn’t what he actually wanted to do — Jesus, it wasn’t _anywhere_ close to what he _actually_ yearned for — but, again. They were surrounded by other people, in the cold dead of night, fighting a war in Vietnam. Whenever they _did_ get the chance to be together, Klaus wanted it to be as special as he could possibly make it. Special, sensual, and _private_. “We’re gonna have to start moving in a couple of hours.”

Dave heaved a sigh, knowing full well that Klaus meant what he said and wouldn’t be budging any further tonight. “Fine,” he mumbled, surging up to give Klaus a proper kiss. His hands cupped Klaus’ face, fingers tangling in the curls at his temples, and the whole thing had caught Klaus so off guard that he gave a semi startled moan, parting his lip. Dave didn’t take advantage of it — a proper fucking _southern_ _gentleman_ , much to Klaus’ mild chagrin — but he did offer Klaus one last peck before moving down to lay his head on his chest. “Will you at least hum that song to me while I fall asleep? I liked the way it sounded.”

“Anything for you,” Klaus whispered back, closing his eyes and starting from the beginning.

—

“How’s that one part go again?”

Klaus shook his head, a fast grin betraying the exasperation he was trying to express. “Which part? There are a lot of parts.”

Dave’s grin only grew wider, and he boldly pulled Klaus back by the hand a few steps only to spin him around and press him back and up against a nearby tree. It was fine, really; the two of them were out on a walk, a well traversed trail by soldiers who had absolutely nothing better to do with their downtime, and no one else was around. Still, Dave had been getting pretty forward with his moves lately. It wasn’t a bad thing, especially not in Klaus’ eyes, it was just _different_.

“The one about sparks in the dark and shit,” he clarified. “Sparks flying? Is that right?”

It was difficult to hold the laughter back, but Klaus managed. He couldn’t very well make fun of Dave for not knowing the words to a song that hadn’t even been written yet, but still. Had anyone ever gotten the words to Total Eclipse of the Heart so wrong before?

“‘We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks,’” Klaus murmured, bringing up a hand to cup Dave’s cheek. “Those are the words you want.”

“‘A powder keg’,” Dave repeated, face softening. His eyes scanned Klaus’ face, seemed to trace over each and every inch of his skin. “Christ above, my boyfriend’s a fuckin’ poet.”

Klaus widened his eyes in shock. There Dave went again, surprising him in a way no one had ever been able to before. “Sorry, what was that?” he asked, fully aware that he was grinning like an idiot. Oh, if only his family could see him now. He wondered what they might have to say. “Could you repeat that? I seem to have misheard.”

“Said you’re a poet, Sugar,” Dave whispered, mirroring Klaus by cupping his cheek as well. “A poet with the most beautiful fuckin’ songs I ever heard in my life.”

And, well, Klaus knew it wasn’t exactly right to take credit for the song. Ben wasn’t present at the moment, luckily — he was usually very careful to allow Dave and Klaus their alone time, lest he see something he didn’t want to. He often gave Klaus mildly disapproving looks for letting Dave think the song was his own, but then again... how would he have explained otherwise? Wouldn’t it have been more cruel to break Dave’s mind with stories of time travel and the twenty first century? Surely that would be worse, right?

So, Klaus decided... fuck it.

“You know what?” he said, glancing down at Dave’s mouth. It was pink, plump, and it had been calling to Klaus every single day since the first time he’d seen it. No matter how many times he kissed it, the allure never seemed to dissipate. “You’re absolutely right. Your boyfriend is the most poetic, musically inclined bastard you’ve ever met.”

And with that, he crashed his lips to Dave’s, letting go of his worries and inhibitions and, for once in his life, allowing himself to be happy. Dave kissed him back, fiercely and passionately, and Klaus reciprocated further. He could only think one thought as the two of them went on, getting lost in the feel of on another beneath the Vietnam sun.

_Thank you, Bonnie fucking Tyler._

—

“So who was it about, anyway?”

Klaus tilted his head in confusion, letting his fingertips dance over Dave’s palms. They were sat beneath the shade of a tree just at the edge of their base. “Who was what about?” he asked, half sure he already knew.

“Your Eclipse song,” Dave answered simply. When Klaus only blinked, silent and in need of a little more clarification, he rolled his eyes and tilted Klaus’ head back against his chest so he could get a better look at his face, just to make sure he wasn’t bullshitting. “There’s that part where you say ‘once upon a time I was fallin’ in love.’ Who were you in love with? An old girlfriend?”

Oh, god _damn_ it.

Being that Klaus had been hesitantly answering questions about this song to Dave for just about seven months, he had, at this point, fully committed to the lie. Or, maybe that was a bit too harsh of a word. He didn’t like to think he was lying to Dave, he was just... not exactly telling him the truth?

“That wasn’t about anyone specific,” Klaus murmured, letting his eyes skip closed. He could hear Dave’s heart beating through the thin cotton of his shirt, and that added to the warmth of the sun against his skin created a feeling that was just short of fucking Nirvana. “They’re just words, Dave.”

Dave snorted, and Klaus didn’t think he’d ever heard anything so beautiful. “Pretty words aren’t just words, sugar.”

Such a drama queen Dave was. He was almost as over the top with his antics as Klaus was, and that was saying something for a guy who’d lived his prime through the sixties.

“ _You_ ,” Klaus began, pointing a finger up at Dave’s face haphazardly. He’d been aiming for his nose, but it felt like he’d actually made contact with his forehead. “Are the _only_ person I’ve ever been in love with.”

Dave scoffed, catching Klaus’s hand with his own and pulling it down to his mouth for a kiss. “Shut up. Pretty boy like you? Ain’t no way.”

“Trust me, there is,” Klaus insisted, smiling fondly. “I... I don’t think I was in a place to fall in love before I met you. My family thinks I’m a joke, my friends... I didn’t really have any. You’re the first one to ever take me seriously.”

He breathed a beat, thinking over his words and how saying them out loud made him feel. Eventually, Klaus decided there was only one thing left to do with this situation.

“How about this,” he murmured, opening his eyes and pulling himself away from Dave’s chest in an effort to look him in the eyes. They were bluer than anything Klaus had ever seen before, and they were easily becoming his favorite color. “It’s for you.”

Save scrunched his eyebrows, the adorable little ‘v’ Klaus had come to hold so close to his heart forming between his eyes. “‘Scuse me?” There was a hitch in his voice, making the word come out a bit rougher than they normally would have in Dave’s deep southern accent. Klaus wondered if, maybe, Dave wasn’t quite as clueless about what he’d meant as he was pretending to be.

“The song,” Klaus clarified, curling his fingers around Dave’s palm. “My song. Total Eclipse of the Heart, it’s for you.”

“Klaus, you can’t just—“

“It’s for _you_ , Dave,” he insisted, making it clear that this was nonnegotiable. “Take it, alright? The song, the words, my... my _heart_ , god damn you. All of it’s for you.”

Tears, crystal clear and smooth as glass, began brimming in Dave’s eyes, a red blotchiness coloring over the tan skin of his face. That was something Klaus had seen only once before, just after Dave had found out that one of the soldiers he’d been good friends with back when they were kids had been blown to death by a stray landmine. Other than that night, which had been filled with a lot of hugging and sobbing into chests, Klaus had never seen Dave cry.

To think that he was crying over this, over the fact that Klaus was opening up to him, offering him his whole heart and all of his affections, even _if_ it was with a song Klaus was falsely claiming... well, it felt good. Someone actually _wanted_ him to want them. It was enough to make Klaus start tearing up himself.

“What are you crying for?” Klaus whispered, shaking his head in awe. “This is a happy thing, isn’t it?”

Dave laughed quietly, shaking his head and clutching Klaus tightly. “‘Course it’s a happy thing, Klaus,” he choked out, looking for all the world like he’d been given the grandest gift of all time. “I love you, sugar. You know that? I love you so much.”

Klaus felt his heart swell, the heady feeling of such a confession producing a bigger hit of dopamine than any of the drugs he used to mess around with could’ve hoped to manage. It was scary, how weightless he felt; was this just what it was like to be in love? Would it always be like this?

God, he _hoped_ it would always be like this.

“I know,” Klaus chuckled, giving Dave the sweetest kiss he was capable of giving. It wasn’t much, wasn’t enough to calm the storm of emotions swirling within him, but it was enough. “I know.”

—

His ears were ringing, near constant gunfire overstimulating his senses and lighting the darkness with haphazard bursts of light. Something sticky and warm had come into contact with his hands, making his fingers slick and clumsy, and he could taste ash in his mouth. Men were shouting back and forth at one another over the cacophony of bullets spraying through the air — those were the desperate ones, the ones who thought if they screamed loud enough, the world might actually care enough to stop and listen long enough for them to get their shit together. Klaus had been one of those men up until about thirty seconds ago, when he realized he was wasting the short amount of time he had left calling for a medic who clearly wasn’t coming. Now he was trying to focus on holding it together long enough to comfort—

No. No, he couldn’t say it, couldn’t even _think_ it to himself. If he did that, then it became real, and that meant that he was accepting this as his reality.

“K... Kl-Klaus,” Dave gasped, eyes blown wide with shock and terror. His uniform was darkening at a rapid rate from a central point on his chest, blooming like some kind of horrible, bloody flower. “S.... si—“ He cut himself off with a pained cry, though Klaus could scarcely hear it. The bullets whizzing through the air were stealing away from Dave what little room there was left for noise.

“Shhh, I’m here,” Klaus told him, doing his damnedest not to sob. He could cry on his own time, not on the little that was left of Dave’s. “I got you, okay? Everything’s... everything’s gonna be just fine, you hear me?”

Maybe it was a lie, and maybe Klaus knew that, but at this point he was willing to say anything if it meant that Dave would be even the slightest bit less scared.

“‘M s-sorry,” he choked out, a spray of blood flying from his lips. There was intention in his gaze, more words in his mind than he was capable of expressing, and it was clear that he as frustrated with that fact. “ _Sorry_...”

“For what?” Klaus asked, voice and hands and _everything_ shaking. His body was becoming heavy, and he found that it was no longer possible to detach himself from where he was clutching at Dave. All he could do was cry and hope and — for the very first time in his life — pray. “Don’t you apologize to me, you hear me? Just breathe, just... just _stay_ with me, please, I—“

_I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you._

“Klaus,” Dave tried again. His voice was shaking, growing softer and softer with every breath he took. He moved to grab Klaus’ hand with his, grasp weak and fading, and Klaus subconsciously noted that Dave’s hands were covered in the same warm, sticky substance as his own. “L-Love... you...” He paused, trying to catch his breath but only causing himself to choke on more blood. Klaus knew in his heart that these sounds would be burned into his memory for the rest of his life. “Will you... s-song? Our song?”

It took him a minute to register what Dave was asking for. Between the shock and terror, the disorientation and those awful fucking bullets, Klaus’ mind was being pulled in a million different directions. Concentrating on anything except Dave and the blood and the fact that he was dying, _Dave_ was _dying_ , why the fuck was this _happening_ — it was damn near impossible. But eventually Dave’s words came back to him like a whisper echoing through a chamber, and Klaus understood.

So, he took Dave’s face in his hands, clutched him close, and began to sing. It wasn’t pretty — god, of course it wasn’t pretty. Most of it was a lot of Klaus choking and sobbing,

“Once... once upon a time... I was f-falling...” Klaus stopped, having finally mustered the courage to look at Dave’s face. “Baby?” he whispered, giving him a gentle shake. Dave’s skin had begun to grow cold, lips parted and eyes glassy. His color was fading, too, though Klaus was having trouble understanding how that had happened so quickly. He looked harder, searching for any sign that Dave was still in there, still fighting somehow, but...

There was nothing. Dave was gone.

“No, wait, Dave, please,” Klaus begged, squeezing his eyes shut. Some voice in his head told him maybe if he just thought hard enough his reality would alter. It had happened before, right? This couldn’t be real. “Come back to me... Dave, _please come back to me.”_

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been laying there. Minutes, maybe, or perhaps hours. Time was irrelevant then. All Klaus knew was that, eventually, other soldiers had been forced to pry him off Dave’s body in the dusky light of dawn. He’d put up quite the fight — one of the poor bastards had caught an elbow to the face, but he had no room to feel guilty over it — but in the end, he wasn’t strong enough to stop them.

They dragged him all the way back to base and sat him down inside his tent, not that he registered the trip or the constant stream of words flooding toward him from his fellow soldiers. Klaus couldn’t hear much of anything, in fact, except for one song on a loop in his head over and over again.

 _That_ _damn_ _song_.

“Stay here, Hargreeves,” his sergeant commanded, fixing him with a pitying glance. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of dog tags — _Dave’s_ dog tags — before dropping them over Klaus’ head and around his neck. Not everyone had known about Klaus and Dave, but there had been a lot of speculation, and Sergeant Langford had been the only one to know for certain. “You stay here until you get your shit together, got it?”

Klaus managed a weak nod, unable to do or say anything else. Sergeant Langford placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, then left in search of the field medic who had been absent during the battle. The man wasn’t three steps out of the tent before Klaus had located the briefcase that had brought him to Vietnam in the first place. He didn’t think twice before opening it, not much caring where it took him, only knew that he couldn’t stay in that place, not without Dave.

“I love you,” Klaus whispered into the darkness of the tent. He knew Dave’s ghost wasn’t present — not enough time had passed, he didn’t think, and he wasn’t sure that he was _ready_ to see Dave like that quite yet. Still, it felt good just to say the words out loud. “I love you _so_ _much_.”

He took one last glance around the tent, surveyed Dave’s minimal belongings — a spare pair of boots, his slept in cot, a paper bird that Klaus had made for him some days before. None of it looked any different than normal, and yet somehow the sights caused quite the sharp pang in Klaus’ chest.

“Love you, Sugar,” Klaus whispered one last time into the silence. He collected the few belongings he had, kept Dave’s god tags close to his heart, and opened the briefcase, feeling himself be transported back to where he’d left off those ten months ago.

Klaus was returning to his own time period, to his own family, but without the _one_ person who had ever made him feel whole, he would never be able to call it home again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This concept has been bouncing around my head for days, and I hope you liked reading it as much as I did writing it! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!


End file.
